Visual Basic 2010 BadImageException

Question

the last days I got in touch with the .NET Framework and particulary with the Visual Basic programming language. Today there appeared a Exception I cannot solve. It's a BadImageException - of course I asked my best friend Google for some support. From the results I've extracted that it seems to be an error because of the wrong platform (x86 vs. x64). So I checked these settings and as I could get they're set to 'Any CPU' (obviously this must mean both x64 AND x86), so probably it cannot be the origin of my error. Does anyone has another idea how to solve it?

The VB division seems to be much smaller than the Java and C++ one eg nevertheless I hope that anyone can help me. Would make me happy and I'm looking forward for you answers.

Sorry, I forgot this. I am using Childkat.ftp2 to connect to a ftp server.

ftp As New Chilkat.Ftp2
Try 
    success = ftp.Connect() 
    If (success <> True) Then 
        Dim failReason As Integer 
        failReason = ftp.ConnectFailReason 
        MessageBox.Show(ftp.LastErrorText) 
        End 
    End If 
Catch e As BadImageFormatException 
End Try 

Answer 1

This exception is also raised when you have a dependency on an assembly that's marked as x86 or uses native 32-bit code. High odds for this Chilkat component to have such a setting or dependency. They started out with ActiveX controls, the kind typically written in C++. Shipping a .NET version of it is easy, writing a .NET wrapper around C++ code isn't very hard when it started out as ActiveX. Completely rewriting it so it only uses managed code is however a major investment. So they probably didn't do that.

You cannot use AnyCPU as long as you use this component. Right-click your EXE project, Properties, Compile tab, scroll down. Click the Advanced Compile Options button and change the Target CPU setting from AnyCPU to x86. Contact the vendor and ask for a 64-bit version if this bothers you. It shouldn't.

Answer 2

Your deployed ChillKat DLL was probably built against an older version of the dot net framework than the one your using. I've seen this when updating libraries on my development machine and forgetting to update the corresponding versions in production.

This exception is thrown when the file format of a dynamic link library (.dll file) or an executable (.exe file) does not conform to the format that is expected by the common language runtime. In particular, the exception is thrown under the following conditions:

An earlier version of a .NET Framework utility, such as ILDasm.exe or installutil.exe, is used with an assembly that was developed with a later version of the .NET Framework.

To address this exception, use the version of the tool that corresponds to the version of the .NET Framework that was used to develop the assembly. This may require modifying the Path environment variable or providing a fully qualified path to the correct executable.

An attempt is made to load an unmanaged dynamic link library or executable (such as a Windows system DLL) as if it were a .NET Framework assembly.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.badimageformatexception.aspx

Answer 3

For anyone else coming in via google, I found this link useful:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/distributedservices/archive/2009/06/17/badimageformatexception-or-typeinitializationexception-when-using-mixed-mode-vc-dlls-in-managed-services-applications.aspx

My issue was a COM reference to a managed dll that had been compiled in .NET4 attempting to be loaded via a usercontrol running in .NET2. Windbg was very useful as the COM reference was buried in a 3rd party dll I didn't have the source for.